


The Days I Stole Were All For You

by katajainen



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: (Because this is Nori we're talking about), Book version of BotFA, Canon Compliant, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Major Character Injury, Nwalin Week, Questionable means to an end, post-BotFA
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:21:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25652806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katajainen/pseuds/katajainen
Summary: When Dwalin first comes to his senses after the battle, his recovery is by no means guaranteed.And while Nori might offer him devoted care, he might also be keeping something from him.
Relationships: Dwalin/Nori (Tolkien)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 27





	The Days I Stole Were All For You

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Nwalin Week 2020, prompt Danger or Protection.
> 
> I'm working to erase the movie version of the battle from my memory, so consider this book!verse.

It’s well into the afternoon on the day after the battle when Dwalin first stirs. He startles awake with a snap, and makes to leap from his bed, the great fool that he is, though he hasn’t got the strength for it. Nori presses his hands on his chest, well above the swaddling of bandages and makes the softest, most soothing ‘there, there’ sounds he can manage until the big lout subsides and slumps back against the bundle of scraps serving as his pillow. The rickety wood-and-canvas frame of the cot complains briefly, then settles again.

‘Thorin?’ is the first word he says, his eyes searching Nori’s, bewildered in a way that makes his heart ache. ‘The boys?’

‘They’re close by,’ says Nori, not too quickly, nor too slowly. ‘But they can’t come to you yet, I’m afraid.’

‘That badly off, huh?’ Dwalin closes his eyes, opens them again slowly. A grimace twists his face. ‘Feels like I got bit in half.’

‘More like sliced, to hear tell of it.’ Nori gets up and goes to the tent flap. ‘And that’s why you won’t be even thinking of getting up anytime soon, unless you want Óin gutting you all over again. He had a hard enough time cramming everything back in the first time.’ He pauses to poke his head outside. A snowflake lands on his nose, then another. He sends off a runner with a few quick words and closes the flap again.

‘How’s everyone else?’

Nori eases himself gingerly back down on the small upturned cask that has served him for a seat before answering. ‘All in one piece, more or less.’ He pulls Dwalin’s blanket higher for something to do with his hands. ‘For now.’

The blanket shifts, and a large hand, shaking, strokes over his hair. ‘Nori–’

‘Dori will likely lose a leg, and Ori’s fretting himself stupid.’ Nori sighs. ‘He’s a tough old boot, he’ll do fine.’

‘You should be with them, not–’

‘No!’ It comes out stronger than he wanted, and he can see the scowl forming over Dwalin’s tired eyes. He’s saved by the runner returning with a bowl of clear broth.

‘Nothing stronger for you for a while,’ Nori says as he kneels by the bed. He takes a small sip from the edge of the bowl. ‘But at least it _tastes_ like salt pork and onions.’

It turns out the spoon is too much for Dwalin’s still-trembling hands, but it’s just as well, since the broth counts as a drink anyway, as Nori tells him. For as long as it takes for him to empty out the small wooden bowl, Nori allows himself the luxury of just watching him; watching him _live,_ in spite of everything. Though that may yet change. He listens for Dwalin’s breath, hears it turn faster, more shallow, and that’s as good an excuse as anything.

‘It hurts, doesn’t it?’ he says, and without waiting for an answer, pulls a small medicine flask from his belt. ‘Óin said to give you this, and no buts.’ He measures out a spoonful of the rust-coloured liquid into the bowl, and pours out some water from a skin hanging on a tent-peg. ‘You won’t heal if you won’t rest, and you can’t rest if you’re in too much pain.’

Dwalin takes the bowl and stares down hard at the contents. ‘That’s poppy-spirits, ain’t it?’ There’s a sheen of sweat on his temples, and not from warmth, for the air in the tent is chilly at best.

Nori touches the side of his face, thumb brushing across his cheekbone, careful of the barely-scabbed cut there. ‘Please,’ he says simply. He doesn’t think he has much time. ‘Please, love.’

Dwalin sighs, then grunts in pain as even that simple movement pulls at his wound, and drains the bowl in one gulp.

‘Bitter, isn’t it?’ Nori says as his features twist at the taste. ‘Want to chase it down with water or–’ he pauses, lifts an eyebrow– ‘something else?’

The words starle a laugh out of Dwalin, one that turns into a tight gasp and gritted teeth. ‘You–’ he accuses, pointing a wavering finger at Nori– ‘will be the death of me someday.’

‘Not if I have a say in it,’ says Nori and gives him a drink of clean water from the skin, then a kiss on his cool moist lips, a soft one, barely a peck, but enough for Dwalin to grin stupidly at him when they part.

‘Now that,’ he says, ‘was a much better taste.’ His lids are already drooping, and he blinks slowly. ‘That was fast,’ he says, his words slurring at the ends. It must be the blood he’s lost, Nori thinks, or how weak he is. He doesn’t think he gave him too much. 

It cannot be more than a few minutes later when Óin barges in.

‘You said he was awake,’ he complains loudly, but Dwalin does not stir.

‘He was– it must be the poppy-spirit– he fell right back asleep.’

‘Hrmph.’ The healer steps closer, peering into Dwalin’s still face. ‘Next time, I want to see him _before_ you dose him.’

Nori looks away, to Dwalin’s still hands lying atop the coarse grey blanket. ‘He was in such pain– I couldn’t not give it to him.’ He can feel Óin’s old eyes at the back of his neck, so he keeps talking. ‘He had some clear broth, some water, just as you said.’

‘Good. Let’s have a look at this, then.’ Óin peels off the blanket to reveal the dressings. There are stains on them, some paler, some darker, some the colour of poppy-spirit. They haven’t grown since Nori last checked them. Óin bends low over the bed and sniffs. ‘Good,’ he says again, covering his patient back up. ‘He doesn’t feel feverish, either.’ Then, just as Nori makes to speak: ‘But it’s only the first day.’

Balin arrives just as Óin leaves, and is just as disappointed as the other for not catching Dwalin awake.

‘It’s only the first day,’ Nori tells him. ‘He might be in better strength tomorrow.’

‘Let us hope so.’ The old advisor makes to stroke at his beard, only to remember the row of stitches across his cheek halfway into the movement, letting his hand drop ineffectively. ‘Thank you,’ he then says to Nori, ‘for looking after him. There’s so much to do yet–’ he spreads his hands to encompass what Nori only knows from sounds filtered in through the canvas: the weary steps and boastful voices of those returning from goblin hunt; the rattle and squeak of carts passing in a bubble of hushed grief, carrying away the dead from the field and tents like this one; the runners dashing to and fro while the chiefs debate food and firewood and other supplies; the snow he had felt settling on his face, and the chill that’s even now creeping through the soles of his boots. No: Nori doesn’t envy Balin’s lot.

‘I couldn’t have done any different,’ he says simply, and tucks Dwalin’s bruised hands beneath the blanket, drawing the wool all the way up to his chin. ‘Not while I am whole myself.’

After all, it’s because Nori let him out of his sight that Dwalin got hurt in the first place.

❖ ❖ ❖

It’s completely dark when Dwalin wakes. There’s a weight on his chest pressing him down, and he cannot rise, cannot breathe for the pain that cuts him through with a saw-toothed blade each time he tries.

After some uncounted length of agony and struggle and darkness the weight on his chest speaks with a familiar voice. It keeps repeating his name, and somehow, somewhere, Dwalin knows it has been doing that for some time.

‘Nori,’ he gasps in reply, with what feels like the last handful of air in his chest.

‘Finally! Be still, you fool– Durin’s hairy balls, if you’ve torn something I swear I’ll kill you myself.’

An unexpected smile finds its way to Dwalin’s face. That’s the Nori he knows. With an effort, he takes slow shallow breaths that hurt but a little, wills the tension away from his limbs and lets his head fall back against the lump of cloth beneath it. 

But as his eyes fall shut, his vision is once more flooded with a whirlwind of nightmare images: Thorin, pierced through by spears in chest and back, lifted from his feet by the sheer force of the third thrust, disappearing into a swarm of enemies; Kíli’s cheerful young face, caved into a ruin of blood and bone, the raw eyeless socket staring back at him, before he, too, is gone; and, Fíli, staggering back from a blow, then rallying and dispatching his foe with a grim laugh on his lips, only to gasp suddenly, choking around a breath that floods dark with his life’s blood, a red river of it down his chin and neck, and his eyes fixed on Dwalin, wide, white and helpless–

‘They were all dead,’ he whispers into the darkness, ‘I saw them.’

Nori’s strong gentle hands clasp around his face, their foreheads touching, his breath warm against his skin as he speaks: ‘It was a dream. Only a dream.’

‘Only a dream,’ Dwalin repeats, and his voice creaks like a vinch in need of oiling. He coughs, and the blade is back again, see-sawing across his belly.

Nori seems to know this without telling, without seeing. ‘Let me get you something to drink,’ he says and gets up. There’s a sound of flint and steel, of puffing breaths, as he teases out a flame, and then the tent grows a little lighter as the rushlight catches.

Dwalin can feel his tongue all but sticking into the bone-dry roof of his mouth, so takes the offered cup eagerly, and swallows half of its contents before noticing the bitterness. ‘No.’ He pushes the cup back to Nori. ‘I won’t have another poppy-dream. Better I do not sleep at all.’ Yes, he is hurting, but no pain is worth seeing what he had. 

A gust of wind makes the tent flap and snap against its moorings, and the flame shivers, its shifting light casting Nori’s narrow face with deep shadows like a skull. ‘I’m so sorry, my love,’ he says as he sets the cup aside. ‘Would it do if I held you instead?’ When Dwalin says nothing, Nori pulls him up by the shoulders, then slips deftly onto the bed so that Dwalin can rest his head in his lap. ‘Now I can guard you from the dark dreams,’ he says very solemnly, and sets his hands on Dwalin’s temples like a pair of shields.

Dwalin would laugh if it wouldn’t hurt so much. Instead, he covers one of Nori’s hands with his own and simply says ‘Thank you.’

Nori blows out the light, and with only the sound of their own breathing for company, Dwalin hears the surrounding camp all the more clearly. People come and go in ones and twos, speaking too far or two quietly for him to make out the words. Fires crackle and spit. Somewhere close by someone is calling out ‘Ah– ah– ah’ over and over again, a sharp brittle sound like they don’t have the strength for more. Dwalin wishes they would stop. Already, his thoughts are turning muddy at the edges, but Nori’s hands are warm and safe, and as he begins to hum under his breath, Dwalin drifts off again.

It’s still dark when he gasps awake from formless dreams, his mouth dry as grit. The cup is already on his lips and he drinks it down without a thought, falling deeper down the heavy well of poppy-spirit sleep.

❖ ❖ ❖

Nori dozes until the grey half-light that passes for dawn this late in the year. With great care he manoeuvres himself free and stretches out his numb legs and aching back, gritting his teeth as his bruised ribs protest. These things are always the worst a few days afterwards, when the body has got its breath back enough to start properly complaining.

He touches carefully at Dwalin’s forehead, then the back of his neck and lets out a breath. The second day, and no fever yet. How about that?

Ori comes with food maybe an hour later, and Dwalin still sleeps. Dori had lost the leg, he tells Nori as the latter wolfs down porridge and hardtack and over-salty Iron Hills sausage. He picks at the edges of his sleeves as he speaks, and what Nori can see of his face between the scarf and his hair has a pale greenish tinge.

‘I couldn’t leave him alone in there,’he whispers for the second, for the third time. ‘I couldn’t.’

Nori knows he should feel guilty. That he should have been there, not here. That he had all but forced Ori to remain in his stead. 

‘I’m sorry–’ he begins, then breaks off. Because ‘poppet’ doesn’t ring true for this young dwarf with too-old eyes. _‘–nadad,’_ he finishes instead. And then he holds his brother until he’s done shaking. It’s mostly relief, Nori thinks, that they’re all three still here, even if not quite whole. He wishes he could have Ori’s certainty that the worst is behind them now.

That is of course the moment Dwalin would choose to wake. Ori quite literally beams to see him stir, and insists on getting Óin right this minute, and Balin as well, and he’s gone before Nori can think of a convincing way to stop him.

Instead, he turns to Dwalin who regards him with bleary eyes.

‘No more dreams?’ he asks.

‘Can’t remember. I woke once– I think.’ Dwalin’s voice rasps like the grit between boot and stone, but when Nori offers him water – plain this time – he sips it very slowly at first, and it should feel insulting that he should suspect Nori of trying the same trick twice.

Again, Óin arrives first, and Nori resigns himself to the inevitable, mutely lending a hand as the process of changing bandages so requires. But Óin seems content to limit the conversation to questions about his patient’s health, and Dwalin offers only grunts and complaints in reply, and doesn’t ask what Nori fears he will.

Then comes Balin, and Nori simply can’t have so much good luck twice. Yet his fate continues to surprise him: Balin talks almost without letup, but it’s mostly about the progress they’ve made, how they’re already beginning to move into the Mountain proper.

‘We’re pitching tents in the Fourth Northern Hall on the Second Level– where there used to be a market, remember? It’s temporary, of course, but much more practical than outside in any case. And did I tell you the Lakemen still have most of their store-houses intact? They want stonework in trade for food, so we need to negotiate some system of credit to use until spring…’

Nori lets the numbers and logistics wash over him, mildly amused as he sees Dwalin’s eyes glaze over, even with the decades of practice he must have– only to startle to full attention by Balin’s change of subject:

‘And then we will have time for– well, time for seeing them all go back into the stone. They’ve been laid out in the First Deep, for the time being.’ Balin pauses just long enough for Nori to hope he might move on to less grim things, but it turns out he was just gathering himself, for his voice is somewhat too steady when he says: ‘The Elvenking surprised me: he gave us back Thorin’s sword, so we can lay it beside him.’

Nori watches Dwalin’s face blanch as he understands. 

‘He is dead?’ He makes it a question, and it was Nori who gave him that hope. It was Nori who delayed the raw sound of anguish that now tears free from Dwalin’s throat as Balin simply nods.

‘Both him and the lads. Forgive me; I thought you knew.’

‘You told me–’ Dwalin shakes his head back and forth, glances at Nori, then his brother. ‘No. No–’ He throws the blankets aside and heaves himself up with a pained groan. ‘I don’t believe you– _either_ of you,’ he proclaims as he stands between the two of them, hunching slightly around his middle, but with his two feet planted firmly on the ground and his hands fisted tight on his sides. ‘Show me,’ he all but growls. ‘Show me where they are.’

Nori doesn’t say a word as Balin helps his brother into his boots and cloak and leads him out of the tent and uphill towards the Mountain’s bulk, nor does he follow them. When he finally moves, it’s to walk through the bustling camp to where his own two brothers have a need of him. The sky has cleared again, and it’s very bright outside, though the sun is not yet noon-high. It had been after sunset, he remembers, when he had found Dwalin and not known if he yet lived, or could yet live.

Because the thing they say about gut wounds is this: if you survive the first three days without the fever setting in, you might make it, and Nori had kept Dwalin still and quiet for almost two full days; now he can only hope it was enough. Though he’s seen people get stabbed in the belly and walk away, only to die bloated and raving two weeks later, so he’s not counting his winnings yet.

But if it did work, and Dwalin does live, then perhaps he might someday forgive Nori as well.

**Author's Note:**

>  _nadad_ \- khuzdul for 'brother'


End file.
